Thursday, 29 May 2008

Russia's Lokoil oil firm delegation came back to Baghdad and held Wednesday a meeting with Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, to revive a Saddam-era oil deal for one of Iraq's 10 super giant fields with its reserves estimated over 4 billion barrels, Hassan Hafish reports for Dow Jones Newswire

In 1997, the oil giant Lukoil struck a $3.7 billion deal with former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to drill at the West Qurna field in Basra. However, Saddam canceled the contract in 2002 the Russians hoped they would be able to revive it when Moscow wrote off most of Iraq's $12.9 billion debt.

In February, Russia agreed to write off $12 billion, or 93%, of Iraq's $12.9 billion debts to Moscow, a gesture that appeared aimed at helping Russian companies win contracts in Iraq. The two sides also signed a separate deal opening up Iraq for $4 billion in investment from Russian firms, including Lukoil.

“We called it our Berlin Wall,” said Saad Khalef, 41, told The NYT on March 6 story as he surveyed the newly uncovered ground where the walls had stood, as crushed and pale as the skin beneath a bandage. “Now we can breathe easy. Yesterday, I felt a breeze coming through, I swear to God.”The NYT's Anthony Shadid in a piece on Jan. 6, 2011 two days after Muqtada Al-Sadr's return from nearly four-year self-imposed exile in Iraq: In 2004, an American spokesman in Baghdad called Mr. Sadr “a two-bit thug.” On Wednesday, the State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, called him “the leader of an Iraqi political party that won a number of seats in the March 2010 election.”